Starmer is dragging us back to the 1970s
Big government is back. Sir Keir Starmer told Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool that a decisive and interventionist state was what the country voted for in July and he proposed to deliver it, with more control over people’s lives.
This was undoubtedly a sweet moment for the party leader. As the first Labour prime minister for 14 years he savoured it and the delegates loved it.
There were some announcements, such as a new Bill requiring a duty of candour from public officials, a response to the Hillsborough disaster, which went down well in Liverpool. He disclosed that the new investment vehicle, GB Energy, would be based in Aberdeen, and that all military veterans who needed a home would be guaranteed one.
But if there was a thread running through the speech it was the expansion of government influence in all walks of life. Sir Keir said there were no easy answers to the country’s problems yet he seemed to believe that more government would solve them.
Labour governments are by their nature more interventionist, but Sir Keir’s feels more like a return to the party of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan than that of Tony Blair.
Certainly the party faithful hope so. Their biggest cheers were reserved for the promise to return the railways to public ownership and restore workplace rights to unions and workers. There was also a class warrior retro feel to a speech that referred constantly to “working people” though without defining who they are.
Do they include entrepreneurs setting up new businesses or company bosses employing hundreds of people, and if so what is in store for them in the Budget next month? Does it include retired people relying on pension savings or are they fair game for the Chancellor? We will know in a few weeks’ time.
This was a more assured speech from the Prime Minister than might have been expected given the noises off stage in the run up to the conference. The controversy over gifts of clothes, spectacles and holidays to himself, Lady Starmer and other senior ministers has tarnished the party’s holier-than-thou image and it is unlikely ever to recapture the moral high ground. He was also candid about some of the challenges that people would face with short-term pain offset by long-term gain.
Sir Keir developed his theme throughout the speech, pointing to the perceived failures of the market to deliver improvements in people’s lives. He said Labour was “unashamed” to work with the private sector and acknowledged that “competition is a vital life force in our economy [and] we will work hand-in-hand with business.”
But he added: “Markets don’t give you control – that is almost literally their point. So if you want a country with more control. If you want the great forces that affect your community to be better managed – whether that’s migration, climate change, law and order, or security at work – then that does need more decisive government, and that is a Labour government. Taking back control is a Labour argument.”
Sir Keir evidently believes he has wide support for this, notwithstanding the fact his party only obtained 34 per cent of the vote at the election. “Working people do want more decisive government,” he said. “They do want us to rebuild our public services.”
But the irony here is that public services by their very nature are already under government control and it is here where the greatest failures have occurred. The NHS is a nationalised service that would benefit from far greater private sector involvement and a move to a social insurance-based system and yet this is not being considered as part of the reforms now being drawn up, as far as we know.
After all, it is in the public sector, not the private, where productivity has fallen and where most people work from home. No one would suggest that the supermarkets or Amazon or Google would benefit from being in state hands.
Small government does not mean no government, pace Ronald Reagan’s quip that “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”
But it is not axiomatic, as Sir Keir maintains, that government interventionism always brings about better outcomes. Indeed history tells us the opposite is true.